i 

ffl 


WHAT 

CAN  PRAYER 
ACCOMPLISH  ? 


im. 


’1ft 


I 


‘Pro/.  £du}ard  I.  ^osworth,  D.D. 


j  LAYMEN’S  MISSIONARY  MOVEMENT  i| 
I  Madison  Avenue,  New  York 


Printed  by  permission  from  the  Report 
of  the  Constantinople  Conference  of  the 
World’s  Student  Christian  Federation. 


What  Can  Prayer  Accomplish? 


WHEN  a  man  prays,  what  actually 
happens?  If  some  kind  of  spiri¬ 
tual  photography  could  catch  the 
soul  in  the  act  of  prayer,  what  would 
be  revealed?  What  is  the  environment 
of  the  soul  at  prayer?  Is  the  soul  alone, 
or  is  Another  there,  vast  and  enfolding? 
If  Another  is  there,  what  goes  on  in  that 
Other  when  the  soul  of  the  man  prays? 
Is  there  any  change  in  the  enfolding  Other 
when  the  soul  of  the  man  prays? 

These  are  questions  suggested  by  the  topic. 
In  answering  them  we  must  of  necessity 
make  one  great  assumption  and  proceed  to 
reason  from  it.  In  a  previous  address  we 
have  seen  the  reasons  for  making  this  as¬ 
sumption.  We  assume  that  there  is  Another, 
a  vast  and  enfolding  personality,  a  parent 
personality  of  which  the  human  soul  is  an 
offshoot.  There  is  a  personal  environment 
about  the  soul  which  is  always  saying  to  it: 
“Oh  heart  I  made,  a  heart  heats  here.” 

That  is,  we  assume  the  truthfulness  of  the 
great  teaching  which  came  to  its  fulness  in 
the  personal  religious  life  of  Jesus — ^the  near¬ 
ness  and  the  Fatherhood  of  God. 


Prayer  Moves  God 

What  does  the  soul  of  a  man  do  when  it 
prays  to  the  Heavenly  Father?  It  rises  up 
in  love  to  make  conscious  gift  of  itself  to  the 
Heavenly  Father  and  to  take  in  return  what¬ 
ever  the  Heavenly  Father  may  give.  When 
the  soul  prays  thus  does  anything  happen 
apart  from  the  praying  soul?  Is  there  move¬ 
ment  in  the  Heavenly  Father?  If  there  is 
the  slightest  propriety  in  calling  God  our 
Father,  it  is  necessary  to  say  that  the  heart 
of  the  Father  goes  out  in  love  to  the  soul 
of  His  praying  child  and  makes  itself  felt 
there;  the  soul  of  the  child  touches  the  soul 
of  the  Father  in  some  special  way,  and  the 
soul  of  the  Father  touches  the  soul  of  the 
child  in  some  special  way  in  response  to  the 
prayer.  This  conception  may  seem  to  re¬ 
present  God  as  changeable  in  a  certain  sense. 
God’s  unchangeableness  is  an  unehangeable- 
ness  of  love,  and  not  an  absolute  inertia.  To 
ascribe  absolute  inertia  to  God  would  involve 
a  denial  of  personality,  for  an  essential  ele¬ 
ment  of  personality  is  varied  activity. 

Prayer  Moves  the  One  Who  Prays 

In  prayer,  then,  something  does  happen 
apart  from  the  man  who  prays.  The  soul  of 
the  Heavenly  Father  is  stirred  and  sends 
something  back  to  the  praying  child.  There 


2 


is  an  inter-play  of  feeling  between  the  human 
child  and  his  Heavenly  Father.  We  shall 
not  easily  over-estimate  the  value  of  prayer 
so  conceived.  Such  inter-play  of  feeling 
purifies  the  human  soul  and  must  give  satis¬ 
faction  to  the  Heavenly  Father.  A  human 
father  is  pleased  when  his  children  come  to 
him  wanting  nothing  except  to  be  with  him 
for  a  little  time.  As  the  relation  between  a 
son  and  his  father  develops,  the  son  cares 
less  and  less  for  the  things  that  he  may  re¬ 
ceive  from  his  father  and  more  and  more 
for  his  father  for  his  own  sake. 

Prayer  Puts  Thought  Into  the  Mind  of  the 
One  Who  Prays 

Can  anything  besides  feeling  pass  from 
the  heart  of  the  Heavenly  Father  to  the  heart 
of  His  human  child?  All  that  we  know  about 
the  relation  of  persons  to  each  other  gives 
us  reason  to  say  that  not  simply  feeling  but 
thought  also  can  pass  from  the  mind  of  God 
to  the  mind  of  a  man.  Persons  are  able  to 
put  thoughts  into  each  other’s  minds  by  the 
use  of  words,  by  gestures,  by  the  glance  of 
an  eye.  It  seems  probable  that  by  tele¬ 
pathic  action  they  may  even  think  thoughts 
directly  into  each  other’s  minds  without  the 
use  of  word,  gesture,  or  look.  In  another 
address,  as  has  been  said,  we  have  seen  rea- 


3 


son  for  calling  God  in  some  vital  sense  a 
personal  being.  It  is  necessary,  therefore, 
to  conclude  that  God  can  do  what  other  per¬ 
sons  can  do,  namely,  put  a  thought  into  the 
mind  of  a  man.  The  Heavenly  Father  can 
produce  not  only  a  feeling  in  the  heart,  but 
also  an  idea  in  the  mind  of  His  human  child. 

Prayer  Can  Be  Answered 

This  opens  a  wide  door  for  answer  to  pray¬ 
er,  for  it  involves  not  only  the  power  of  God 
to  put  a  thought  into  the  mind  of  the  man 
who  prays  but  also  into  the  mind  of  some 
third  person,  or  into  the  minds  of  many  per¬ 
sons.  Have  you  need  of  guidance  in  some 
emergency?  In  answer  to  your  prayer  God 
may  put  a  thought  into  your  mind  that  will 
give  you  the  needed  guidance.  He  may  so 
influence  your  mental  processes  that  you 
shall  rightly  reason  out  your  course  of  act¬ 
ion.  Do  you  need  money  for  some  good 
purpose?  God,  by  putting  a  thought  into 
your  mind,  may  show  you  how  to  get  it,  or 
by  putting  a  thought  into  the  mind  of  some 
other  person  He  may  lead  him  to  send  you 
what  you  need.  Here  seems  to  be  wide  scope 
for  answer  to  prayer,  because  almost  all  of 
the  petitions  we  ever  have  occasion  to  make 
to  God  are  such  as  can  be  answered  by  His 
producing  feeling  and  thought  in  the  mind 

4 


• 

of  some  man.  The  power  to  do  this,  as  has 
been  said,  is  inherent  in  the  very  nature  of 
personality.  We  may  therefore  without 
hesitation  attribute  this  power  to  God,  since 
the  assumption  with  which  we  started  is  that 
God  is,  in  some  real  sense,  a  personal  being. 

Objections  to  Prayer 

There  are,  however,  certain  objections  to 
prayer  felt  by  many  earnest  men,  which  are 
not  fully  met  by  the  position  just  taken. 
The  chief  of  these  objections  should  be  con¬ 
sidered  here. 


Cause  and  Effect 

First  of  all,  it  is  often  thought  that  since 
we  live  in  a  world  of  law  and  order,  where 
an  unvarying  cause  produces  an  unvarying 
effect,  there  is  no  place  left  for  God  to  make 
things  happen  in  answer  to  prayer.  The 
first  word  of  reply  to  this  objection  should 
be  one  of  appreciation.  We  have  reason  for 
gratitude  that  we  live  in  a  world  of  law  and 
not  in  a  world  of  caprice  or  chance.  We 
must  be  able  to  count  upon  the  steadfastness 
of  the  so-called  forces  of  nature  if  we  are  to 
forecast  results  in  a  civilized  way.  There  is, 
however,  one  thing  that  becomes  more  and 
more  evident  with  every  advance  in  human 
experience,  namely,  that  the  so-called  forces 

5 


of  nature  which  surround  us  are  extremely 
susceptible  to  the  influence  of  a  personal  will. 
The  more  we  learn  about  the  forces  of  nature 
and  the  laws  of  their  action,  the  more  we 
are  able  to  do,  not  in  spite  of  them,  but  by 
means  of  them.  Every  advance  in  acquaints 
ance  with  these  forces  increases  our  power 
to  answer  the  appeals  of  our  fellow  men  for 
help.  Three  thousand  people  are  in  immi¬ 
nent  peril  in  mid-ocean.  Once  there  would 
have  been  no  hope  for  them,  but  since  the 
personal  will  of  men  has  learned  to  mani¬ 
pulate  natural  forces  the  wireless  sends  its 
radiating  appeal,  great  ships  change  their 
courses  and  hurry  thither  from  all  points  of 
the  compass  to  answer  the  cry  for  help. 
Soon  the  air  will  be  full  of  aeroplanes  flying 
swiftly  to  every  point  of  need.  The  forces 
of  nature  do  not  keep  persons  apart ;  they 
facilitate  intercourse.  They  are  mighty  de¬ 
vices  for  enabling  men  to  answer  each  other’s 
calls  for  help.  The  unvarying  regularity  of 
their  action  is  what  makes  them  serviceable 
under  the  manipulation  of  a  personal  will. 
Since  men  can  so  use  them,  much  more  can 
God  answer  the  prayers  of  His  children  by 
means  of  them. 

It  seems  evident,  however,  that  God  does 
not  intend  frequently  to  answer  prayer  by 
co-ordinating  natural  forces  in  unusual  ways. 


G 


If  we  were  near  to  death  for  lack  of  water 
in  a  desert,  where  it  never  rains,  we  should 
not  have  faith  to  ask  God  so  to  co-ordinate 
natural  forces  as  to  produce  rain.  We 
should  rather  ask  Him  to  put  into  the  mind 
of  some  man  the  thought  of  going  out  into 
the  desert  on  some  errand  that  would  inci¬ 
dentally  result  in  relief  to  the  sufferers.  God 
has  evidently  purposed  to  leave  the  sphere 
of  natural  forces  to  man  for  his  investigation 
and  conquest.  He  has  let  men  freeze  to 
death  with  undiscovered  beds  of  coal  beneath 
their  feet;  He  has  let  the  generations  suffer 
pain  for  centuries  with  the  elements  of  un¬ 
discovered  anaesthetics  about  them.  We 
would  not  have  it  otherwise.  The  zest  of 
life  is  in  overcoming  difficulties  under  the 
spur  of  fearful  necessity.  A  wise  father 
leaves  his  children  to  find  out  many  things 
for  themselves.  He  does  not  intervene  to 
make  life  easy  for  them  at  every  point.  The 
independence  and  self-respect  essential  to 
character  result  from  difficulties  met  and 
overcome. 


Ready  Made  Plans 

A  difficulty  of  a  different  sort  is  sometimes 
raised  by  earnest  minds  wishing  to  pray; 
God  is  supposed  to  have  planned  all  things, 
great  and  small,  from  the  beginnine-.  If  the 

7 


occurrence  of  the  thing  prayed  for  is  in  His 
plan  it  will  certainly  occur  and  there  is  no 
need  to  pray  for  it ;  if  its  ocurrence  is  not  m 
God’s  plan,  it  will  not  occur  and  it  is  useless 
to  pray  for  it.  The  futility  of  this  objection 
to  prayer  appears  sufficiently  for  practical 
purposes  when  it  is  noted  that  if  it  proves 
anything  it  proves  too  much,  for  it  proves 
that  it  is  useless  to  ask  any  one  for  any  thing. 
I  may  not  ask  the  simplest  favour  of  my 
friend  because  if  God  has  planned  that  m^ 
friend  shall  grant  the  favour,  grant  it  He 
will  without  my  asking.  If  God  has  not 
planned  it,  grant  it  my  friend  will  not,  no 
matter  how  much  I  ask  him.  Such  reason¬ 
ing  is  recognized  at  once  to  be  foolishness, 
for  we  know  perfectly  well  that  we  constant¬ 
ly  get  things  from  each  other  by  asking  each 
other  for  them.  Even  so  we  may  get  things 
from  God  by  asking  Him,  for  He  also  is  a 
person. 

God  Will  Give  Without  Being  Asked 

Another  and  more  serious  objection  to 
prayer  that  arises  in  many  earnest  minds  is 
this:  since  God  is  a  good  Father,  He  will 
surely  give  good  gifts  to  His  children  with¬ 
out  waiting  to  be  asked.  Certainly  a  good 
father  does  give  many  good  gifts  to  his  chil¬ 
dren  without  waiting  to  be  asked.  Does  God 


8 


ever  wait  for  the  prayer  of  His  child  be¬ 
fore  giving  a  good  gift?  Can  He  not  al¬ 
ways  be  left  to  do  what  is  host  without  any 
presentation  of  a  human  petition?  Regard¬ 
ing  this,  several  things  may  be  said.  First 
of  all,  it  is  abnormal  for  a  child  to  suppress 
all  petition.  In  a  free,  spontaneous  family 
life,  children  ought  to  make  all  their  wants 
known  without  restraint.  Furthermore,  a 
father  often  waits  before  doing  a  good  thing 
for  a  child,  until  the  child  cares  enough 
about  it  to  ask  for  it.  It  might  be  unwise  to 
give  it  before  the  child  cared  enough  for  it 
to  ask  for  it.  Still  further,  it  is  often  the 
policy  of  a  father  to  do  things  in  such  a 
way  as  to  give  the  largest  feasible  share  in 
the  achievement  to  his  children.  Character 
is  developed  by  giving  them  large  and  re¬ 
sponsible  part  in  the  enterprise.  Prayer  is 
a  way  of  working  together  with  God.  Genu¬ 
ine  prayer  is  not  mere  words.  It  involves  as 
real  an  output  of  vital  energy  as  is  involved 
in  an  act  of  the  will  of  God.  It  is  a  normal, 
wholesome  way  of  working  together  with 
God,  and  for  such  co-operation  God  might 
sometimes  wait  before  proceeding  to  action. 

This  objection  asumes  a  more  difficult  form 
when  the  prayer  is  in  another  s  behalf. 
Would  God  wait  before  doing  a  good  thing 
for  one  of  His  children  until  another  child 


9 


asked  Him  to  do  it?  Certainly,  God  would 
do  many  things  for  His  child  in  need  without 
waiting  for  another  child  to  ask  Him.  But 
is  it  ever  proper  for  a  child  to  suggest  to  his 
Heavenly  Father  the  doing  of  a  good  thing 
for  one  of  the  other  children?  Is  so-called 
intercessory  prayer  ever  anything  except  an 
impertinence?  The  answer  to  this  question 
appears  clear  when  we  stop  to  consider  the 
moral  purpose  that  the  institution  of  the 
family  serves.  At  least  a  large  part  of  the 
moral  purpose  of  the  family  is  accomplished 
when  the  children  become  unselfishly  inter¬ 
ested  in  each  other.  The  family  is  an  ethical 
success  when  each  one  of  the  children  comes 
to  his  father  and  says  regarding  some  good 
gift;  “I  wish  you  would  give  this  to  my 
brother.”  Therefore,  it  is  not  at  all  strange 
that  a  father,  for  the  sake  of  securing  this 
great  ethical  success,  should  sometimes  wait 
before  doing  a  good  thing  for  one  of  the  chil¬ 
dren  until  another  child  has  time  to  realize 
his  brother’s  need  and  to  say:  “I  wish  you 
would  do  this  for  my  brother.”  It  is  not 
inconceivable  that  God  should  sometimes 
wait  before  doing  a  good  thing  for  some  of 
His  children  in  one  country  until  some  of 
their  brothers  in  another  country  should 
have  time  to  see  what  brotherhood  means  and 
to  pray  for  their  brothers  in  a  foreign  land. 


10 


Such  waiting  may  sometimes  contribute  to 
the  accomplishment  of  God’s  great  purpose 
to  fill  the  earth  with  a  race  of  brotherly  men, 
profoundly  interested  in  each  other. 

Does  Not  Bend  the  Will  of  God 

Prayer,  then,  is  never  an  effort  to  bend 
the  will  of  God.  It  is  never  an  effort  to 
persuade  God  to  do  something  He  would 
rather  not  do.  It  is,  instead,  the  normal, 
reverent  rising  up  of  a  son  of  God  to  inquire 
whether  there  may  not  be  some  good  thing 
which  the  Heavenly  Father  wishes  to  do  so 
soon  as  He  can  have  the  co-operation  of  this 
son  through  prayer. 

There  are  three  classes  of  things  in  an 
ideal  human  family.  First,  the  things  that 
the  father  does  for  his  children  without  wait¬ 
ing  to  be  asked.  They  are  many  and  of 
fundamental  importance.  So  God  pours  the 
great  gifts  of  His  love  lavishly  into  the  lives 
of  His  children  without  waiting  to  be  asked 
to  do  so.  No  one  asked  Him  to  send  His 
Son  into  the  world.  In  the  second  place, 
there  are  the  things  that  the  children  ask 
for  and  are  refused.  In  the  spontaneous 
life  of  a  happy  family  all  requests  ■\idse  and 
foolish  may  be  freely  made.  Many  of  the 
requests  of  little  children  are  certain  to  be 
foolish.  In  God’s  great  family  the  oldest  of 


11 


US  are  but  little  children  in  the  eternal  life 
and  certain  to  make  many  foolish  prayers 
that  God  is  too  good  to  grant.  Because  God 
does  so  many  things  without  waiting  to  be 
asked  and  refuses  to  do  so  many  things  that 
He  is  asked  to  do,  we  are  sometimes  inclined 
to  think  that  there  is  no  place  for  the  prayer 
of  specific  petition.  But  in  God’s  great  fa- 
niily,  as  in  any  other,  there  is  a  third  class 
of  things,  namely,  those  that  are  given  by 
the  Father  only  when  and  because  the  chil¬ 
dren  ask  for  them. 

Prayer  and  Power 

Some  thing  does  happen,  then,  in  prayer 
apart  from  the  man  who  prays.  Prayer  is 
not  the  act  of  a  deluded  soul  rising  to  make 
conscious  gift  of  itself  to  an  imaginary 
Father.  Prayer  is  not  lifting  up  pitiful 
hands  to  brazen,  unanswering  skies.  There 
is  a  living  God,  a  Heavenly  Father.  He  is 
near  at  hand,  waiting  to  listen  to  His  child’s 
voice  and  ready  to  answer.  His  heart  is 
stirred  by  prayer.  The  heart  of  him  who 
prays  is  stirred  in  feeling  by  the  answer. 
The  minds  of  men  receive  from  God  thoughts 
as  well  as  feeling  in  answer  to  their  prayer. 
All  the  mechanism  of  the  world  is  so  arrang¬ 
ed  as  to  enable  the  living  God  to  act  freely 
upon  the  lives  of  men. 

12 


“Speak  to  Him,  thou,  for  He  hears,  and  Spirit 
with  Spirit  can  meet — 

Closer  is  He  than  breathing,  and  nearer  than 
hands  and  feet.” 

Jesus  was  no  false  guide  when  He  spoke 
with  full  conviction  out  of  the  experience 
of  His  oAvn  life  of  answered  prayer  and  said ; 
“Ask  and  it  shall  be  given  you;  seek  and  ye 
shall  find;  knock,  and  it  shall  be  opened 
unto  you;  for  every  one  that  asketh  reeeiv- 
eth ;  and  he  that  seeketh  findeth ;  and  to  him 
that  knocketh  it  shall  be  opened.” 

Prayer  and  the  Golden  Rule 

But  he  who  would  be  guided  by  Jesus  into 
the  life  of  answered  prayer  must  also  let 
himself  be  guided  by  J esus  into  full  accept¬ 
ance  of  Jesus’  ideal  of  life.  He  must  desire  to 
see  every  other  man  possess  as  fair  a  chance 
at  all  good  things  as  he  feels  ought  to  be 
granted  by  others  to  himself.  “If  ye  then, 
being  evil,  know  how  to  give  good  gifts 
unto  your  children,  how  much  more  shall 
your  Father  who  is  in  heaven  give  good 
things  to  them  that  ask  Him  ?  All  things 
THEREFORE  whatsoever  ye  would  that 
man  should  do  unto  you,  even  so  do  ye  also 
unto  them.” 


13 


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